Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

interpretation as well as of intensity. With regard to practical implications, directionality
effects highlight the importance of teaching athletes to “re-frame” their physiological
symptoms constructively. For example, Hanton and Jones (1999) reported that elite
swimmers benefited from learning to interpret pre-race anxiety symptoms in a positive
manner. As these authors put it so memorably, the elite swimmers in their study had
learned to make their butterflies “fly in formation”! In an effort to explore the meaning of
anxiety to athletes, try the exercise in Box 3.1.

Box 3.1 Exploring the meaning of anxiety to athletes

The purpose of this exercise is to explore what performance anxiety means to athletes and
to investigate how they cope with it In order to complete this exercise, you will need to
interview three competitive athletes—preferably from different sports. Before you begin,
however, please ensure that these participants have been informed about the purpose of
the study and have consented to have their views recorded and analysed. Then, using an
audio-cassette or a mini-disc recorder, ask them the following questions:

• What does the word “anxiety” mean to you? Do you think that it is helpful or harmful to
  your performance?


• On a scale of 0 (meaning “not at all important”) to 5 (meaning “extremely important”),
  how important do you think that the ability to control anxiety is for successful
  performance in your sport?


• Do you prefer to be “psyched up” or calm before a competitive event in your sport?
  Why? Please explain.


• What things make you anxious before a competition? How do these factors affect your
  performance? Explain.


• What things make you anxious during a competition? How do these factors affect your
  performance? Explain.


• What techniques do you use, if any, to cope with anxiety in your sport? Where did you
  learn these techniques?

Analysis
Do the athletes differ in their understanding of anxiety? If so, are these differences related
to the sports that they play? From the athletes’ experiences, what factors make them
anxious before and/or during competition? Do the athletes use any specific techniques to
cope with anxiety? If so, where did they learn these techniques?

In summary, we have learned so far that anxiety is a multidimensional construct with
cognitive, somatic and behavioural components. In addition, we have discovered that this
construct can be distinguished from fear and arousal experiences. Third, we saw how
athletes differed in the way in which they interpret their arousal levels as being either
facilitative or debilitative of their sport performance. At this stage, however, we need to
tackle the question of whether or not different types of anxiety can be identified.

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